Covid Measures
Catholic Education has adopted more stringent Covid measures for Term 3 to minimise the transmission of Covid and ensure our schools remain open. As reported in the media there is a predicted Covid peak forecast in weeks 4 and 8 of this term which could see triple the number of Covid cases currently being seen in the community. This would significantly affect school operations and the continuity of Teaching and Learning in Schools. To try and minimise the impact on school operations, Catholic Education has taken a risk-averse approach to ensure the maximum number of staff are available in schools. This means the following measures are being undertaken:
- Any event that could take extra staff away from the school in Term 3 should be reconsidered and if possible, postponed. This includes planned excursions and camps. For Term 3 we will not be charging the excursion levy to parents. Where possible and in a Covid safe way, we will continue to host incursions for our students.
- We are still planning on hosting our Athletics Carnival in Week 3 as it is in the local area and completely outdoors, more information will follow shortly.
- Parents will be notified if 25% of a cohort contracts Covid in a 7-day period. It is extremely important you notify the school if your child contracts covid via email stfranciscalwell@cg.catholic.edu.au or by submitting an absence note on Compass. These will be tracked to notify parents if we reach the 25% threshold.
- Current ACT health advice is for close or household contacts to not attend school if practicable. If students do need to attend, they can as long as they are asymptomatic, conduct a RAT test 24 hours before returning to school and then again, every 48 hours while they are a close/household contact.
- If students are symptomatic, they are not to attend school. If students present with unexplained symptoms at school, they will be isolated and parents contacted to pick them up from school.
- Schools are to limit the number of visitors they have onsite. This unfortunately, includes parents attending assemblies. Those who were able to attend an assembly last term will know that this decision is one I am particularly saddened by.
- We can continue our morning and afternoon pick-up and drop-off arrangements; however, we will need to be stricter with the number of people we can accommodate in the hall. This may mean a longer wait time to pick up your children. My advice is to grab a coffee and if possible, come a little later when the flow of parents is greatly diminished. We are staffed to provide supervision until 3:30 pm.
- Any meetings between staff and parents should be conducted remotely wherever possible.
- The school will continue to use all resources available to ensure adequate supervision ratios at school. In the event a significant number of staff are unavailable, there may be a time when we may need to keep cohorts at home, provide minimal supervision or most unlikely close the school under the direction of the Director of Catholic Education. In any of these cases, we will endeavour to provide parents with as much advance warning as possible.
- Unlike Term 1, we will be unable to provide work for students who are required to learn from home this term. To support students who are required to learn from home, the following resource has been put together to use while students are not in attendance at school.